Bachelorette

"So on Bachelorette, Isobel decides to return to the city. It's like the sequel to her story. She goes back to the city by train, which is why the beats of the song are like a train, and she prepares to confront all the people that she loves with love. It's a disarming confrontation."- Bjork

I think it's about a woman in love with a very strong willed man. She personifies herself as this loving passive object while he's an active animal or person who comes and goes as he will. She's slightly afraid that he'll forget her.

I would usually dissuade anyone from attempting to interpret Bjork as her lyrics are so complex and cyptic sometimes that absorbing your own personal interpretation from her work is the real quality a lot of fans find in her work. But well, since we're here...

I take a lot of the song from the title. I see the first stanza as the girl describing that the physical aspects of her life are secondary but the other person is of such a character that that is all they notice, the whirl, just a physical attraction.

I see stanza two as sex. How she felt sex would be something which would have brought them together, and brought the physical and mental r'ship together...but instead something that pushes them apart...

The chorus is important...she again highlights that returning at night sex is the main component to the relationship but the tide, be that love or lust she doesnt yet know, will bring him back...and if he forgets her name she has lost him forever for him she is then nothing more than an object, not a person, not in love...

"You are the one who grows distant when I beckon you near.." - this line alone sums up the song...she wants more and he refuses to commit...

Each heart she grows for a relationship is broken as below the surface the water is still...there is no love. An eternal bachelorette...

also could go into this in a socio-political way as to the way society holds vastly different opinions of single men and single women, men being somewhat free stallions and women being depressed and needy....

"I'm a fountain of blood in the shape of a girl." Anyone who's been in the type of relationship this song seems to describe knows what an awful feeling that is. (And those are the perfect lyrics to describe it, too.) You love him, you know he doesn't love you back, but you don't want to let him go, so you stick around, but meanwhile, you're nothing to him except "a fountain of blood." And my other favorite lyric: "I'm a tree that grows hearts, one for each that you take"-- can't you just feel the pain in those words? Ironically, I heard this song the last time I ever saw him. Also, Emcee Sol, thanks for translating that Icelandic part, it's really quite beautiful (the lyrics as well as the music, of course).

wow is all I can say about this song

definitely the man's somewhat ambiguous and wavering between staying and leaving but as i perceive it's out of more than just one reason, that he is strong-willed or anything. the punch-lines are acutally the very last verse which appears in some versions of lyrics but gets replaced by icelandic in the actual song: life's a necklace of fears your uncried tears on a string our love will untie them, come here-- loving me is the easiest thing

it's just so very obvious in here that bjork's trying to imply it's the constant 'fears' in life that make the man hesitate. the 'uncried tears' represent the unspoken truth hidden deeply in the man's heart, suppressed by conventions. feeling pathetic for the man however, the woman wants to save the man by freeing his heart from the earthly worries for that such a full-hearted love is paradoxically the simplest and 'easiest'. quite a contempt on social morality and prejudice in this sense. but too bad this verse is not counted so...how sad.

After watching the video and contemplating the lyrics it comes down, to me, to be about the nature of the Love("Presence") and Memory (I will be referencing the video with only a nod to the lyrics).

Memory, or the illusion of eternity, which can be replayed in the mind over ad infinitum, can be employed to gain much (in the video it's the promise of her eternal love in return for money/fame/relevance/value). Upon further iterations of reflection (memory for it's own sake in form of the theatrical play) it can come to decay the sanctity of that original Love/Presence.

It is what I have personally come to understand and define as the meaning of Love which is "continuous Learning"; Love is the worship of the moment which leads to the next and that which it offers.

By worshipping Memory instead of Love one loses the future and those connections to what it offered become smeared and overanalyzed and are symbolically explicated as those overgrown/decaying elements in the video. People and those loving situations become ruins. It points to Memory's weakness: it is not Life/Love.

But Memory does have its purpose in the Whole. Einsturzende/Neubauten. Destroy/Rebuild. Live/Learn.

So it comes out as, "don't get so caught up in the past and its failures to live up to the new standards you've come to learn to apply from those very situations you've gleaned them. Go on and live, learn, but avoid rooting the future too much in the past. Root instead in this very moment which is the very Statement of that which was gained from the past."

Tying in to the first two songs in this "song trilogy" (1.Human Behaviour, 2.Isobel, 3.Bachelorette), we have, thematically, 1. Naivety(the Other), 2.Self-Absorption(the Self), 3.Self-Consciousness(the Whole/World).

In the lyrics, now, the "Me" that is referenced is that "Moment of Love/Presence"...it is the Whole/World that is asking you to partake of it, to move both inward from feeling separate (your mind fully as the Other) and to move outward from being narcissistic/self-absorbed (your mind fully as the Self). This accomplishes what focusing a lense does; you can focus the lense too far out or too far in creating a fuzzy picture while if you focus right in you get the Moment/Presence/Love.
"Focused too far in"=the Self : is the "girl made of blood". "Focused too far out"=the Other : is the perpective of that bird on the hat-brim. The nourishing moment is when the Wheel's Edge connects, via Spoke, to the Axle around which it is spinning. The Wheel's Edge and the Axle roll nowhere without the many Spokes that connect them.

The "killer whale" is only "trapped in the bay" for having "forgotten my name"....the Me referenced by this "my" as in "name"... is named Love as I've hence delineated. By getting wrapped up in Memory and its/your failings... (the fleeting nature of Love, embodied in the the metaphor of walking forward on "a path of cinders burning under your feet")... leaves one stuck stagnant in the bay for not following the natural growing/receding tendencies of the tides. When the waters are accommodating and deep you can come to touch the edge where the ocean meets the land... where trees full of hearts/Love can be in reach to pluck. When Emotions, the waxing/waning natural tendency of Love, allow is only when the "cinders are hot"...that is Love can only happen when the "cinders are hot".

"Strike while the iron is hot".

When one is "trapped in the bay" of Memory they cling like an intruder to any branch to help wring them from being stuck... much like a jilted, clinging lover attacking the one that left them because they are unable to move on and Love someone/where else.

The ocean, as an archetype, is the Subconscious... those things which draw unspoken like "a whisper in water". To travel deep into these waters is perilous as their is "no map or compass" (referenced from the first song of this trilogy, Human Behaviour). And so the tendency to neglect listening to the whispers of the ocean waters is understandable as "this is really dangerous"... :)

I'll leave it at that. Cheers~

I absolutely love this song and I think it is my favorite of Bjork's. I love that her lyrics can be interpreted differently by different people, it is like a piece of artwork. My interpretation of this song:

This is the story of a loving relationship between a man and a woman. She makes a lot references to "fountain", "stream", "bay" and "water" - water is a symbolism for emotions. She also makes a lot of references to "bird" and "killer whale" which by nature are animals with migratory patterns they follow for their annual survival. It is in their nature to migrate away and yet they will always return. Also the saying is that if you love something you must set it free (like a bird) and if it returns to you, then it loves you as well. So by this I think this means a busy man or a cheating man - not important which, but important that he leaves her and returns to her, because he loves her. She loves him and understands and accepts his nature. In this they both get what they want from their relationship. She willingly releases him into the world because she is secure in their love and the knowledge that he will return to her, for if he forgets her, he will be lost. The firewalking reference - she is saying that she is his right of passage and she will lead him the way (the one way street). The whisper and secret for him to hear is her professing her love for only him and that she is his alone (like to hear a secret). He grows distant because he is afraid of the strength of her love beckoning him near, so she again releases him so that he can return to her in his own time. She is a tree that grows hearts meaning she is full of never ending love for him and he steals her heart away every time he returns to her. The branch that he breaks may symbolize how she breaks in her attempt to support him. She is teaching him that fears and tears (from our past hurts) are something we carry with us (like jewelry) but she promises that their love will untie them and work them out. She is trying to make love for him uncomplicated.

As EmceeSol interpreted the Icelandic lyrics for us (thank you for that) :-)

I'm a tree that grows hearts One for each that you take .....

i think the last line is: your the intruders hand im the branch that you break.

Thanks kaatrien ;-) I added the end